Sometimes, budget is tight and we are under severe pressure to save some money. Unfortunately, food is something that we can’t afford to reduce. Our family needs to eat nutritious food at sufficient amount, regardless of our situation. Here are things we need to do to feed our family with much less money.
- Shop in-season and locally: We should go to the local farmer’s market, instead of big supermarkets. We should purchase ingredients that are available in abundant quantity at our locations, such as vegetables, seasonal fruits, banana bunches and excess apples. Some farmers could agree to provide us with free tests.
- Clean up ingredients immediately: Clean ingredients will last much longer. We could clean up our market bounties, chop them up, store them in containers and place them inside refrigerator. We could use them later to soup, wholemeal pastas and others. Vegetables that we leave outside will go bad faster.
- Reduce waste: Although we have tried to reduce waste by cleaning produce and store it in the refrigerator, there could be worn and withered veggies that we need to deal with. Any organic waste can be converted to homemade compost. We could indulge the worms with those tasty titbits. However, we should be aware that animal-based ingredient won’t become good compost.
- Make everything from scratch: Restaurants typically charge us more than the total value of the ingredients. They also need to pay employees and bills, so we could actually pay more than what we need. Alternatively, we should be able buy our raw ingredients in bulk, such as dried fruits, cereals, seeds, nuts and flours. At home, we could organize foods based on their types, whether they are organic or not.
- Cook something filling: Many households make mistake by cooking foods that are not packed with calories. As an example, carbohydrate-dense ingredients, such as yam, potato and rice are particularly filling and they are affordable. On the other hand, steaks and other meat-based dishes will be more expensive to prepare. We should also add some nutritious ingredients, such as vegetables and seeds.
- Choose real food: Organic milk could taste much better than condensed or powdered versions. We could prepare cakes, breads or pies with good flour, yeast, oil, water, sugar and a bit salt. Supermarket breads can be more expensive, because we also need to pay a portion of bakers’ salary and there are also multiple ingredients that we don’t know.
- Grow our own: We could easily grow pepper, spinach, beans and other plants at our backyard. It would be a good idea to plant high-yield crops, such as potatoes and yams to fulfil our carbohydrate intakes. If we are living in warmer areas, it is a good idea to plant multiple tropical fruit trees that can provide us with nearly monthly supply of fruits. These trees are often quite hardy and we only need to provide them with enough water and homemade compost.
